Between
by anathemawrites
Summary: One last step and he doesn't know if he can take it. Max/Jude.
1. between : jude

**Between**_  
Creeno_

* * *

_Based on the song by Vienna Teng of the same name. Jude/Max._

* * *

It's all the same to Jude, wars, and all wars broke down into one simple thing:  
bloodshed.

* * *

Lucy's fighting a war against another war. Her weapons are fliers and papers and marches. Her uniform is her long hair and well to do clothes, the peace sign she keeps on her wrist and probably her heart too.

Max's war is against an army of Prudence's, his fellow army men copies of him and Jojo, without the soul either possessed. He fights in jungles, and his weapons were loud guns that didn't belong in his hands because it _wasn't his war._

Jude didn't have a war, and that was a problem.

-

"Don't you care?"

Jude peers at Lucy for a moment before looking back down at his drawing through a haze of pot. She's holding Max's letter and they both can see that Max is breaking, even if he doesn't say it himself.

"Jude--"

"I care about Max. Shouldn't that be enough?"

It obviously isn't, by the look on her face.

-

He hates the little telly Paco the Shagger brings to the apartment. It sends him feverish dreams of Max screaming for someone, _anyone_ to come save him. Sometimes, Max will do nothing in Jude's dreams but stare lifelessly at the letters and drawings Jude has never sent. He cries when he looks at them.

"Why won't you send them?" he asks.

Jude can't honestly answer, even in his dreams.

-

He paints endlessly as the telly transmits images of bloodied soldiers.

He looks as if he were fighting right along Max, emerging from his work room covered in splatters of red. Lucy can't bear to look at him when he emerges, and he can't really look at her, either. There's a gulf between them now, all due to one stupid war.

-

"He's asking for you, Jude."

He turns away from Lucy, away from the letter, even if all of him wants to turn around and grab it.

"Jude, please."

He stays firmly turned to the wall, gazing at the old sketches he and Max had done in life's long past until she leaves the room.

And it's then that he lets himself cry.

(_i'm scared you won't ever write back_)

* * *

_Review!_


	2. between : max

**Between**_  
Creeno_

* * *

_Thanks for the reviews! One more part, and I'm done. _

* * *

Max shoots and shoots and shoots.  
But they just keep coming.

* * *

The people they kill, they haunt him in his dreams. They crawl into his bunk, armed with anything and everything. All of them are small, all of them have small hands and when they look at him, they all look like poor, poor Prudence.  
It makes waking up a brief heaven.

-

Lucy sends letter after letter.  
And he always asks, _How's Jude?  
_ She says: _He's fine.  
_ She says: _He's ok.  
_ She says: _He misses you.  
_ Max doesn't think so. He's not seen a drawing or even a stick figure from Jude.

-

"Carrigan!"  
Max swallows and stands up, "Yessir?"

"Fetch Johnson for me, son." Private Mitchell doesn't even make eye contact.  
It's code for:

_another man's killed himself. go make it look good._

He's on his way home, is what Max thinks to himself, even if it's not true.

-

What sends Max home is a piece of shrapnel.  
Only, it feels as if God's hand itself descended and flicked him right on his head, sent his world spinning and tilting into nothing but a parade of bloody Prudence's and a faceless Jude who shakes his head and says:

_Right mess you've gotten into, mate._

-

Lucy's smile is watery and tired. There's something wrong with her and it takes Max a moment to wade through the Blue (_beautiful Blue, made things better, so much better_) to see it:  
Lucy wasn't Lucy.  
This Lucy was made of tired angles and sharp lines. She was loud, so loud now, not the quiet girl with a knowing smirk.

"What happened?" Max rasps. "You ain't, ain't right anymore, Luce."  
Her tears flow and the pieces come together.

-

He looks at the ocean and he thinks of a dingy English town. Though Lucy didn't want him to, he saw the room full of Jude's drawings. He saw his friend's own breakdown recorded in lines and color.

-

Max looks to the ocean and _wills_ it to bring Jude back home.  
Wherever this home was now, where Prudence was alive and Sadie and Jojo were trying to stitch themselves back together and Lucy was only whole when she was mourning.  
But home was home, and he'd be damned if Jude wasn't here to share it with him.

* * *

_Review!_


	3. the swelling fermata as the chord dies

**Between  
**_Creeno_

* * *

_I didn't think I'd ever actually finished, but I turned on the song again and the fic came running back. Enjoy the last part!

* * *

_

They don't come together easily; nothing ever really does.

"You don't look fucked up to me," Jude says as he climbs into the cab. He's elated to be back home, in New York again. Yeah, it's home now, not Liverpool and he's done feeling guilty over that. He is.

Max is different, yeah. He's got this ugly little mustache that as soon as he falls asleep, Jude's gonna shave off and he's even thinner than he was, but he is still fundamentally _Max_.

"Yeah, well," Max grins sardonically as he starts up the cab, "Everything _below _the neck works fine."

* * *

They all come together on that little roof. They're a family again, yeah, but different.

* * *

Max feels himself settle back into something resembling his old life, but it isn't all the same. Prudence isn't always Prudence; instead, she sometimes has bullet holes in her small frame, and sometimes, when she sleeps, she's so still, that Max just has to wake her up, just to make sure he hasn't shot her by accident.

(_again?_)

(_sorry.)_

She forgives him(_dearprudence,forgivesallofhissins_), curls up with him on some nights, just to get him to sleep.

Jude is the one who has changed least, maybe. Jojo can still play as if he sold the Devil his soul, but it's sadder now, when he plays. Sadie makes up for that by shining brighter and brighter, and sometimes, Lucy will join in. It isn't necessary for Lucy to cry anymore to make her OldLucy, but NewLucy is still foreign to him, sometimes.

Maybe it's because she isn't a part of JudeandLucy anymore.

* * *

Something critical tore them apart over the war, and somehow, he knows it has to do with him and the drawings that are fading, the ones Lucy can't stand to look at.. It makes him sick, to think of it, but it has to be.

"So what if it is?" Prudence says, curled up in his lap as Sadie dances with Jude while Jojo looks on with amusement. She looks up, eyes wiser than anything Max has ever seen. "Maybe they needed it."

Max doesn't answer, just pulls her closer and watches Jude grin crookedly as Sadie tries to direct him.

* * *

"Why didn't you go back to her?" Max looks at Jude, not caring if he disturbs his sketching. Jude draws in Sadie's old room now, and yet, it's strange that he keeps the door open, but only really allows Max in.

"I did," Jude says, almost dreamlike as he glances up at the jumble of bottles catching sunlight, chases away jungledark.

"You didn't," Max sits up straight, mouth in a line. "You two aren't..." he grasps for some of the words he's lost, fumbles as Jude looks at him, pencil slack in his fingers, "Aren't..." He makes a noise of frustration, unable to describe what they had been in his eyes.

"Together?" Jude supplies.

Max gives a vigorous nod. "Not like you used to be."

Jude can't even really explain why. He's never been good with words, especially when Max is straightforward like this.

So he gives no definite answer, and Max quiets for a moment.

* * *

There is something, where Lucy used to be, but now it's a Max shaped hole and at the same time, where Max used to be, Lucy has taken. Jude doesn't know what to do about this, but all the same, he spills it all out to Jojo between the older man packing up his guitar, onetwothreefour drinks, and a staggered walk home made of confusion and things he's not sure Jojo told him.

Jude wakes up to find himself sprawled on his(_Sadie's_) bed. There's sunlight filtering through the glass he's got placed on the widowsill that altogether blinds him as he sits up. Instinctively, his hand raises to block it and there's a hiss of annoyance that he hasn't heard in some time.

Jude lowers his hand and there's Max, scowling and much too awake.

"Wha'?" Jude asks groggily.

* * *

And that's just like Jude, isn't it, to ask the most obvious question with the near most obvious answer?

"Put it back," Max gets up, demanding. Jude blinks at him owlishly, squawking as he jerks his hand back down. And the combination of glass and light hits him again and there it is:

Jude written in redgreenbrown, mixture of humanforestjungledarkandsunlight.

Everything Jude is, that Max helped him become, _right there_.

* * *

There are tears sliding down Max's face. Jude moves from the light and Max grasps at him, pulls him to face him, forehead to forehead.

"Max?" Jude asks softly, feeling as if he were on the edge of a yawning cliff, uncertain and scared. There is something in Max's tears and stillness and the grip on Jude's face that he's trying to say and Jude can see it just in the corner of his eye.

"Max?" He says again, desperate to connect the dots.

* * *

It's his decision, whether or not to take this last step out of jungledark and maybe into something brighter. Love can't fix everything, but it helps.

He presses his lips against Jude's and hope's he understands.

(_and he has to, when he feels jude press back_)

* * *

_Wow. A happy ending, how rare. :D Click that periwinkle blue button and give me a review, yeah?_


End file.
